


Making (But Not Revealing) Lists

by zlilyanne



Category: DCU
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 09:53:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11780694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zlilyanne/pseuds/zlilyanne
Summary: Damian has a list ranking his favorite siblings. Jason is higher up than most would suspect.





	Making (But Not Revealing) Lists

Damian would rather kill someone than admit to this, but Jason is his second favorite sibling. Keeping a list is a bad habit, he knows already, a carryover from a childhood where you had to know exactly where you fell in a list of favorites so you might as well keep one of your own. It’s a bad habit Damian can’t break, and won’t admit to. Dick is first because Dick gives him everything he didn’t even know he could want, and Dick gives it without question or expectation and Dick makes Damian feel like an actual, honest to god, person not a weapon or a pawn or a mistake. Dick is a new home, a new life. So Dick is the favorite followed by Jason, Cassandra, Barbara, Stephanie and finally Tim. Tim and Stephanie are interchangeable based on how often he sees them. The more he sees one the lower on the list they go.

 

He could justify everyone on the list based on their skills and usefulness as Grandfather did, and has several times, but in the end, the current list was based on flat out bias.

 

Tim was disliked on principle, because he was Grandfather’s favorite and because he had occupied Damian’s place at his father’s side, despite this, he had a more than healthy respect for Tim’s detective work. Stephanie was far too loud, too careless with his boundaries, and laughed at his perfectly serious threats. Barbara was brilliant and incredibly useful, but pushy with her ideals, and lectured him when she saw him being overly violent...and she saw everything. Cassandra was a quiet companion and should have been, by all rights his second favorite. She listened attentively when he had something to say, and looked the other way when he was a little too rough with criminals and best of all she could kick his ass and was patient enough to teach him new moves. Still, Cassandra was solidly regulated to third. 

 

Second went to Jason, and not by a small margin either. Damian would never admit to his list mainly because he’d have to admit  Jason was second favorite, and explain why. All the other positions Damian could say with minimal embarrassment, and most of the order would not be surprising to anyone. Jason closely after Dick though? They would want to know why and Damian wouldn’t explain, he was too ashamed.

 

Jason was all the parts of his past he wasn’t allowed to love anymore. If Dick was his new home, then Jason was his old home. Dick was bursting with ideals and compassion and love, Dick was being wrapped in a hug and flying through the air, Dick was knowing that even if Damian chose to quit being a vigilante and become a gogo dancer instead he would still be loved. 

 

Jason was the opposite. Jason had two lifetimes and a gruesome death’s worth of cynicism beaten into him and it showed. Jason was passion and righteous fury, and the deep feeling of satisfaction from winning a fight. Jason was hitting too hard because they  _ deserved  _ it and the thrill of doing something he knew his father would disapprove of. Jason was feeling viciously proud of who he was and what he could do, and under all of that Jason was a stack of sensory memories from when he was young brought back to life.

 

The acrid decaying smell of The Pit still clung to him, often overlaid with blood and gunpowder, or leather and motor oil in a fiercely familiar way. The song he hummed to himself while working on his bike was the lullaby mother had once sung to him. The way Jason made thukpa was the way the cooks had made it for him when he was ill, and Jason’s secret love of baking meant that Damian could often find khapse or basbousa secreted away in one of his safe houses. Jason never directly gave him any, but also never commented on it disappearing or stopped making it, which was how it was growing up as well. If you could take it without being seen you could have it. Jason was knowing that even if he slipped up and maimed or even killed someone he would still be loved.

 

So Jason was the second favorite, and he probably knew without Damian admitting it anyway...that annoying fucker. 

**Author's Note:**

> AAAHAHAHHAAAA I should be writing my actual chapter fic but Jason's birthday week has caught me in its grasp. So here is a super sketchy un-betaed drabble. Please let me know if you find mistakes so i can edit them out


End file.
